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While this is not specifically what you are asking for, Adobe has a very cool SVG demo (click on the visual building search, SVG plug-in required) that allows one to visually browse a buildings personell directory. All you would need to do is add a search to this page and have automatically go to the tower and floor and then highlight the proper office.

Adobe should do something like Alias|Wavefront does with Maya - release a free, 90% functionality version

I don't know about free, but Adobe does sell a 90% functionality version of Photoshop for $100 for one seat. Photoshop Elements includes just about everything in Photoshop except for high-end prepress features, without watermarks. It's more than enough for photoshopping your face onto somebody elses body or photoshopping "All your base are belong to us" onto a Chick-fil-A ad. In overall capability, it's a bit above GIMP but below the full version of Photoshop.

Even with a big vendor, what's going to happen when they end-of-life the product? Will I still be able to reactivate PhotoShop CS

So people running pirated copies of their programs might not be thrilled about this, but let's refrain from setting up straw men, shall we?

From Adobe's Website:

Q: What happens if the product is discontinued?

A: Adobe is fully committed to honoring the terms of its product license agreements. In the event that a product is discontinued, Adobe will enable automatic approval of all activation requests for that product or provide a means to remove activation outright. In either case, the customer will not experience any change in software capabilities.

Adobe Photoshop is an image editing and manipulation package, originally used for retouching photos (hence the name) but nowadays capable of vastly more. For years it's been the standard for 2D graphical work in design, graphics and DTP, and with QuarkXpress* was part of the reason for the success of the Mac in those fields (there were no PC versions originally). Practically any professional graphics you see nowadays has had Photoshop used on it somewhere. Other programs offer some of the functionality - Paint Shop Pro, and The GIMP which aims to be an open-source Photoshop equivalent - and does pretty well for a lot of things - but Photoshop is still the professional standard.

(* QuarkXPress is pretty much the standard page layout package, most newspapers use it. It too was for a long time only available for the Mac.)

Also, they used Photoshop 7 for the Photoshop tests. Does Photoshop CS (that's the name for Photoshop 8, which is coming out in November) have optimizations for the G5?

Adobe has a new SVG viewer plugin in beta. Currently, only Win32 versions are available, but the lead developer said on the SVG-dev list that they build and test for OSX and Linux. Unlike ASV3, this works fine with current Mozilla/Firebird, but its scripting can't talk to the browser or to the other documents the browser displays.

For my work with SVG, this doesn't matter, but if you want, e.g. your javascripted html to control your SVG, or for one SVG doc. to control another, then it's a problem.

Executive summary: the glass will be 3/4 full for Moz. and for Linux in a short while.

"I'm buying a new mid-grade laptop computer, which I plan to dual-boot between Windows XP Home and Mandrake 9.x. Before its arrival in a few weeks I'm trying to think of what 'essential' software I'll need to make a usable home system. In general I'd like to spend as little money as possible (free is good). As far as my needs, think 'typical family PC' without an emphasis on gaming. I know I can get something like Open Office for word processing, presentation, etc. needs, but is there such a good thing as a good free virus checker? A good free email client? A handy web browser? What would you consider the top 10 (or so) pieces of software for a new home system, bearing in mind that I need software for both the Windows and Linux side of things?""

These are the files I keep on my "Esential CDs" that I bring around to help out other non-techs (Windows users) people. (Of course because they are financially broke after paying $200 for their Operating System, they want everything else to be free.) ;-)

Anti-Virus: The best free antivirus program I have found AVG Anti-Virus 6.0

Office Suite: (Word Processing, SpreadsThe quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumped off the edge. The quick brown fox ran off with all his toysheet, Slideshows, etc.)
Open Office 1.1

CD/DVD data/audio Burner: (and doubles as a CD image creator .ISO and .CUE)
BurnAtOnce 0.99a

CD/DVD image loader/emulator (perfect for people who often misplace their CDs): (loads .ISO, .CUE, .CCD, .CDI etc. files without burning them)
DAEMON Tools 3.41

MultiMedia Player (Mpeg, Mp3, AVI, etc.)Winamp Classic 2.91

or for audio only Foobar 2000 0.7

Zip Extractor:Ultimate Zip or7 Zip 3.11

Download Accelerator:Star Downloader v1.42

Internet Browser: (other than IE) Mozilla 1.4 or Opera 6.20

System Statistics: (Motherboard, Memory, BIOS, Video, Software info, etc)AIDA32 3.80

E-mail (other than Outlook Express)Thunderbird 0.2 or Pegasus Mail 4.12

Spyware/Adware killer:Ad-aware 6 or Spybot Search & Destroy 1.2

Pop-up Killer/Browser Enhancer (for IE)Google Toolbar 2.0.102

PDF document reader:Adobe Acrobat 6.0

FTP program (other than IE and the command line FTP)Winsock FTP LE 5.08 or FileZilla 2.2.1

Internet Chat Programs (other than Windows Messenger)Gaim 0.70or Trillian Basic 0.74E

Firewall Software:ZoneAlarm 3.7.211

or if you have Highspeed Internet, a spare 200mhz PC, and two network cards laying around...ClarkConnect 2.0

CD Ripper / MP3 Creator CDex 1.51

Graphics Editor (other than Paint) The Gimp

Graphics viewer (other

These are some of the free (speech or beer) software I'd install on a family, non-gaming machine:

• Web Browser: Mozilla or Mozilla Firebird
• E-mail: Mozilla (cross-platform), Mozilla Thunderbird (cross-platform), Evolution (Gnome), or KMail (KDE)
• Office Suite: OpenOffice.org
• Media Player: QuickTime (Windows), Zinf (cross-platform), RealPlayer (cross-platform), WinAmp (Windows), MPlayer (Windows), XMMS (Linux)
• Image Viewer: IrfanView (Windows)
• Instant Messaging: Gaim (cross-platform)
• Personal Information Management: Palm Desktop Software (great PIM suite even if you don't own a Palm)
• Other: Acrobat Reader (although I'm weary of their DRM), Java 2 Runtime Environment, Macromedia Flash and Shockwave players, Ad-Aware (spyware remover for Windows), ZoneAlarm, Sygate Personal Firewall (firewall, alternative to ZoneAlarm), Grisoft AVG Anti-Virus, FileZilla, WinRAR (not free, shareware with nag window), Ofoto desktop software (basic photo album and touch-ups, even if you don't use Ofoto's online services)

Some other software I'd install on my own desktop (dev), in decreasing order of importance:

• Cygwin, bascially all packages
• UltraEdit32 (45-day trial shareware)
• TightVNC
• Ghostscript and GSView
• Java 2 SDK
• Eclipse
• Borland JBuilder Personal
• ActiveState Perl, Python, Tcl/Tk (yes, even though they are in Cygwin), Jython
• GIMP
• POV-Ray
• At least one of Apache, Tomcat, or Plone (Zope)
• HTTrack (a website copier)

Digital Photos are certainly now one of the top ten uses for family PCs.

I highly recommend using some Digiphoto Organization software, it's just leaps and bounds over storing photos as files in folders.

These packages help organize, view, and browse your digiphoto collection, then actually do something with the photos: format them for email, printing, web galleries, calendars, greeting cards, etc.

There are plenty of choices in Windows, but I don't know of any usable packages for Linux. Of course, for OSX there's iPhoto (free!)

I've been using Photoshop Album since it was released in February, and I've been very happy with it. Version 2 was released on Monday, and there's now a free Starter Edition - so there's no excuse not to try it!

Some other digital photo management software:

• ACD Systems ACDSee
• Jasc Photo Album
• Lifescape Picasa
• Ulead Photo Explorer

Digital Photos are certainly now one of the top ten uses for family PCs.

I highly recommend using some Digiphoto Organization software, it's just leaps and bounds over storing photos as files in folders.

These packages help organize, view, and browse your digiphoto collection, then actually do something with the photos: format them for email, printing, web galleries, calendars, greeting cards, etc.

There are plenty of choices in Windows, but I don't know of any usable packages for Linux. Of course, for OSX there's iPhoto (free!)

I've been using Photoshop Album since it was released in February, and I've been very happy with it. Version 2 was released on Monday, and there's now a free Starter Edition - so there's no excuse not to try it!

Some other digital photo management software:

• ACD Systems ACDSee
• Jasc Photo Album
• Lifescape Picasa
• Ulead Photo Explorer

Digital Photos are certainly now one of the top ten uses for family PCs.

I highly recommend using some Digiphoto Organization software, it's just leaps and bounds over storing photos as files in folders.

These packages help organize, view, and browse your digiphoto collection, then actually do something with the photos: format them for email, printing, web galleries, calendars, greeting cards, etc.

There are plenty of choices in Windows, but I don't know of any usable packages for Linux. Of course, for OSX there's iPhoto (free!)

I've been using Photoshop Album since it was released in February, and I've been very happy with it. Version 2 was released on Monday, and there's now a free Starter Edition - so there's no excuse not to try it!

Some other digital photo management software:

• ACD Systems ACDSee
• Jasc Photo Album
• Lifescape Picasa
• Ulead Photo Explorer

2. Firewall (I use Zonealarm)

3. Mozilla or Firebird and Thunderbird

4. Openoffice

5. Winamp

6. Ad-aware

7. Nero Burning ROM if you have a CD-R or CD-RW

8. Kazaa Lite K++

9. A PDF Viewer (such as Acrobat Reader)

10. A install disk for your favorite Linux Distro. Windows Sucks!

And if you still want to use Mozilla and try out Adobe's SVG plugin it is now possible with the 6.0 beta plugin.

Since it don't install itself automatically you have to copy the files from some "shared files/adobe" directory to "Mozilla/plugins", just search for "NPSVG6.dll" and "NPSVG6.zip"

Adobe has one here. Furthermore, if you've installed any of the latest versions of Acrobat Reader (or one of many other Adobe products), it has quietly installed the SVG plugin for you.

Interesting...

my third result is Digital Video, which doesn't have "google" in it at all...

There are 2 more free packages! GhostWord and GS4Word. Both create PDFs reasonably well, but on my machine GhostWord doesn't export bookmarks and GS4Word doesn't export hyperlinks. Seems that you can't have everything after all. That's still better than a RedMon/PDFCreator/whatever solution. GS4Word is lincensed under the GPL. Both solutions also support Excel and Powerpoint and create the necessary links in presentations and sheets...

Still, I don't know about OpenOffice, but the biggest problem with the GhostScript ps2pdf - solution is that it doesn't support pdfmark out of the box. pdfmark is what makes the bookmark menu, clickable hyperlinks and forms in PDFs possible. Does that work reasonably in OpenOffice?

I'd guess that most people buy Acrobat for the sole reason that they need to create the bookmark outline.

• There is a beta of Mozilla that has native support for SVG.
• GNOME 2.2 can use SVG images not only for icons or desktop backgrounds, but also for the GUI widgets themselves and the graphics of the window manager
• Adobe certainly endorses it
• Corel
• Webdraw
• SVG Map Maker
• and the list goes on

Send Adobe feedback on their new product activation scheme. I am someone who uses a single copy of Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign on multiple machines. I have probably purchased a few thousand to several thousand dollars worth of software from Adobe over the years.

I do this because I am the only one using those many machines, and except for very rare occasions, only one copy is running at any given time (seeing as how I only have two hands and one head). Product activation preventing me from working under this setup, or preventing me from reinstalling for any reason, is likely to make me think twice about upgrading my software.

FYI, the preview is available at http://www.adobe.com/svg/viewer/install/betaframed .html, and it is only for Win98-WinXP. I hadn't known it existed until this comment--thanks.

Also, there is one person working on a native implementation of SVG for Mozilla. I hope he gets more help and stabilizes the SVG code soon so that I won't need Adobe's SVG Viewer.

Look it's even easy to click!
http://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/

Karma Eats

this...
Now no one can freeload and us legit user should get some price break soon now. Just like Windows XP. No?

...direct from Adobe, natch. Not sure exactly who it's for, but it looks like a cross between InDesign page layout software and a creative word processor.

Now with Product Activation
http://www.adobe.com/activation/main.html

Sadly, I still think Photoshop beats the Gimp for high end photo editing. Is there anything available for Linux that uses colour profiles and allows on screen proof previews using those profiles?

I checked out the site and Photoshop CS requires activation a la Windows XP.

Initially only the windows version will get the DRM, but it's coming to Mac soon according to the Adobe FAQ : here

Styles, structure, yes.

But not MS Word, not on a Mac, not on a PC.

At every company I've been at where they either had professional tech writers or were hiring them, Framemaker was used and if Word had been used, it was being phased out.

I feel the pain of those who lose formatting on medium and long documents in MS Word--my wife shares her pain with me :-/

I made her get Framemaker, now to make her use it. It does styles and structure right (and there is (was?) a Unix version).

Do the Macs at CompUSA allow people to access the CD drive? If so, just waltz in, pop in the disc, test it, get your disc, and waltz out.

1. 
   
   always the first place one should start
   
   Samples#1
   
   samples#2
   
   examples#3 (part of a SVG webring)
   
   examples#4 (it also answers the question. Who uses this?)
   
   ditto#2
   
   Adobe plugin (shoots down the "hasn't been updated in years" argument)
   
   Too imature for you?
   
   Oh yeah! Immature, and it has a browser plugin too
   
   

1. 
   
   always the first place one should start
   
   Samples#1
   
   samples#2
   
   examples#3 (part of a SVG webring)
   
   examples#4 (it also answers the question. Who uses this?)
   
   ditto#2
   
   Adobe plugin (shoots down the "hasn't been updated in years" argument)
   
   Too imature for you?
   
   Oh yeah! Immature, and it has a browser plugin too
   
   

• Foaf integration
  
• Trackbacks
• Books, Movies, Music, Games
  
• Blogshares shortcut for adding your blog into a fantasy stock market
  
• GeoURL for adding lat/long and adding your blog into world database
  
• Creative Commons licensing on content so you can retain rights while promoting the CC movement
  
• Yahoo Groups features: Msg Boards, Calendar, Chat, Address Books
  
• The ability to create contests:
  • Football Pools
    
  • Baby Pools
    
  • Square Pools
    
  • Dead Pools
    
  • Bracket Pools
    
  
  

It never got out of beta. "The beta program for Adobe FrameMaker 5.5.6 on Linux has now ended.... At this time, a commercial version of FrameMaker for the Linux platform is not available.", where "this time" is prior to December 2000.

I love Postscript, and there is some great Adobe software, but they have a habit of killing off niche software becasue it conflicts with some part of their business plan. Such as the Ares font applications FontChameleon, FontFiddler, FontMonger, FontHopper, FontMinder(they didn't want cheap font editors available), and Adobe File Utilities, a conversion app that the bastards bought up and killed.

It would be in a lot of their benefits to use vector files rather than raster. I mean, they develope in vector files anyway. I believe Gabe and Greg both use Illustrator then save as jpg or gif for their websites. Isn't there a vector plugin or something? Heck they could use Flash and make it one freaking frame. Surely it would be smaller.

A brief tour of the Adobe website, such as the Enterprise products reveals products like Adobe Central Pro Output Server which traces its heritage back to the same JetForm Central product (or JetForm Server for old-timers) that likely produced the story-submitter's barcodes.

So while the name JetForm may no longer exist, many of the same solutions formerly offered by JetForm now live-on via Adobe.

Gavin.

A brief tour of the Adobe website, such as the Enterprise products reveals products like Adobe Central Pro Output Server which traces its heritage back to the same JetForm Central product (or JetForm Server for old-timers) that likely produced the story-submitter's barcodes.

So while the name JetForm may no longer exist, many of the same solutions formerly offered by JetForm now live-on via Adobe.

Gavin.

Rights-Enabled PDF Documents

I'll be happy to as soon as someone actually implements it.

1. "Technical Writing" is now more appropriately called "Technical Communication" and includes, beyond the stereotypical software manual: business & marketing communication ("marcomm"), information design, corporate training & curriculum development, online communications, single-sourcing (think XML!), and even, by some definitions, web design. See the Society for Technical Communication for more info.
2. If you want to succeed in the world of private industry with a "soft subject" degree such as tech/professional writing, you should take a handful of writing classes to brush up on your skills, but skip the MS degree and get an MBA. Most job titles like "technical writer" are being phased out for titles like "project manager" or "business analyst." In short, your writing skills are going to be put to use secondary to your people management and other "soft" skills.
3. Tech writing in the tech fields -- engineering & CS -- is being outsourced and shipped overseas just like the tech jobs. You might be better off learning Chinese, Hindi, or Russian if you want to do serious tech writing for IT in the next decade. That's where all the "how to use your cell phone/PDA/laptop books are being written. Red Flag Linux HOWTOs, anyone?
4. The job market for tech writers is almost worse than that for high tech, because tech writing for IT is dependant on the success of IT companies. When you're an IT company that's on the ropes, the first thing you forego in getting the next product to market is high-quality documentation (if you were planning to use it in the first place). Half of the ~600 self-identified tech writers in the Portland, OR area are currently un- or under-employed in this market. Yes kids, that's 50%.
5. Salary: While the bestest writers can command near 6-figure salaries or more, they're working 60-80 hours per week, just like the IT people with those salaries. Writing has a lot in common with coding, in a way -- lots of prelim. design and planning, lots of computer time, and lots of "debugging" (except it's called revision). And there are few if any shortcuts to making a good end product.
6. Tools: because you asked. RoboHelp, Adobe FrameMaker, and, sad as it is, MS Word, are the main tools for the job. Knowing XML, HTML, Dreamweaver, Flash, and the like can also be helpful, depending -- this field is as specialized as the computer world. The technologies you know define your job. For more ideas, check out the trainings offered at a local tech. comm. consulting firm.

Did I claim to be a world-renowned organization with a multi-billion dollar budget run by (supposedly) some of the brightest people in the U.S.?

No, but being a slashdot reader, you are probably tech-savvy enough to download the free software and maybe even install it yourself on whatever OS you are running.

What are you complaining about exactly?

If you guys didn't know, the British government owns the BBC.

Not quite: you can say that the British public owns the BBC, but it's more complicated than that, since it's an independent public corporation established by a Royal Charter. (Worth reading just for the archaic language: 'The Corporation shall continue to be a body corporate by the name of The British Broadcasting Corporation with perpetual succession and a common seal with power to break, alter and renew the same at discretion') In that sense, it's not really 'owned', but held in trust by the Board of Governors for the British public for as long as its Charter lasts.

(Compare it to the various 'Royal Societies' in Britain, if you like...)

As far as companies or people allowing free distribution, I'm sure most anyone on slashdot sees this all the time. Usually you see somthing like:

All Images: copyright 1995 - John Doe Permission granted to distribute freely or non-commerical use.

Copyright (C) 2000, ArmourSoft. Permission granted to duplicate and distribute freely

If you're interested in contacting Adobe, here's a direct link to their Feature Request form. I suggest as many of us as possible to visit this page and let Adobe know there certainly is a demand for their product. We're talking 3 studios here, including Disney. Lets make some (positive) noise!

http://www.adobe.com/support/feature.html

This is a bit unrelated, but also interesting. It appears that Adobe used Qt on their album product, Adobe Photoshop Album. I imagine that moving a behemoth like Photoshop to a different widget set would be a massive undertaking, so I'm not holding my breath..

Because the expensive proprietary software is sometimes far better than the free alternative?

just enter
http://www.sandia.gov/awards/images/R&D/Sol ar.pdf
into Here
to read the pdf report. i'd post the report but its 15 pages long.

Yes, it certainly would be a good sign... if Adobe's own vector animation authoring tool would actually support SVG. And helpful too, since there doesn't seem to be any major SVG authoring tool around (one that graphically oriented web designers might consider using.)

So web designers wouldn't use Illustrator?
Why not? Adobe markets it as "The industry-standard vector graphics software".

Here's a link to an adobe site with SVG demos. If you look 4 down from the top, you'll find an interactive chart demo.

I think this may be a good example of what you're looking for.

In terms of support, if you plan on having this application around for a while, SVG is only going to get more popular.

Finally, it should be noted that the upcoming Adobe SVG Viewer 6 (available now in beta plays nice with Mozilla / Netscape 7. (Although a win32 binary only is provided, the team at Adobe stated that they are building for Linux and OS X, too.) Assuming ASV6 will be out by the time your project is done, platform breadth isn't a problem for you.

being backed by Adobe is a very good sign.

Sorrowly, this has already happened; Adobe hasn't updated their plugin since 2001 and is lacking support for everything newer than the 1.0 standard.

This is not true. Adobe has an alpha with support for SVG 1.2.

Someone posted this in yesterday's SVG discussion: Apparently Adobe SVG has come quietly back to life. 07/2003 Build Here